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People engaging in their regular work or recreational activities have tremendous potential to observe and record events that may identify important changes in the environment. The Wildlife Health Event Reporter is an experimental tool that hopes to harness the power of the many eyes of the public to better detect these changes.

This specific instance of WHER was modified to suit the Botulism Coordination Network, made up of researchers and scientists who are on the lookout for any wildlife health or environmental observations of note which could signify a Botulism event. Members of the general public can easily submit reports of observations they have made which is distributed by a daily email alert to any subscriber, or as an RSS feed that can be monitored for more frequent updates.

Using a simple set of forms, users can quickly share observations about sick, dead or injured wildlife, as well as answer a few questions about environmental observations noticed, upload images of sick, dead or injured wildlife or the environment.

Select from a single observation (e.g. I saw a dead bird at this spot! I wasn't going looking but I noticed this during a routine task), a route you create (identify where you started looking, and where you finished making observations), or a pre-defined route (if you belong to a volunteer network, you may have a route you walk periodically and submit reports for that same route).

Input any animal observations

Check-off environmental observations you made

Upload any photographs you want to share to accompany your observations (either animal specific or general to the environment)

Save for later, or Submit! You don't have to complete your observations all in one sitting. Feel free to come back later and complete the record.

Development of GLRI-WHER

The development of GLRI-WHER was funded by a grant through the Environmental Protection Agency and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

In order to customize the original WHER application, we enlisted voluntary stakeholders from the Great Lakes Botulism Coordination Network to provide insight and feedback on the needs of researchers and scientists studying Botulism around the Great Lakes.

Stakeholders were asked to review the original WHER site and make some observations, comments or thoughts about what it was missing compared to their normal information collection process. For example, the original WHER application didn't have specific environmental observations for recording, nor the ability to perform transect-based observations in multiple locations along a transect.

After the gap analysis process was completed, the stakeholder group was asked to review and rank the needs in terms of priority for the GLRI WHER project. Those items which were identified as high priority and that fit inside the scope of the project were selected to be implemented.

Special thanks to our stakeholder group members who helped us establish the use cases and needs for the GLRI WHER application. Their agency/group associations include:

GLRI-WHER Mission

This site provides news and information about the online tool, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative - Wildlife Health Event Reporter (GLRI-WHER). The application was designed to enable the public to submit observations of sick, injured or dead wildlife, as well as environmental observations on the shores of the Great Lakes.

Injured or dead wildlife, as well as evidence of algal blooms, can be an indication that an area is being affected by a Botulism outbreak. Botulism Type C has been known to cause extensive waterfowl mortality in the western United States since the early 1900s. Botulism Type E's appearance in the Great Lakes began in the early 1960s in Lakes Huron and Michigan.

Over the years, the incidences of botulism in the Great Lakes have increased steadily, and in the 1998-2001 period was responsible for the deaths of thousands of birds in Lakes Huron and Erie. Scientists working in state, federal, and non-profit agencies are looking for your help to identify events that could be important in research on Avian Botulism and protecting birds from this disease.